Payments

In global news this week, 7-Eleven puts holograms at the point of sale; the U.K. shores up security for online payments while cracking down on Bitcoin ATMs; and more organizations find ways to send aid to Ukraine.

Bhattacharjee is charting a path for the transaction banking business to use fintech partnerships and cloud technology to court small businesses to the investment banking giant.

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Rohit Chopra should exercise his power to extend the full protections of Regulation E and the Fair Credit Billing Act to the booming installment loan sector, the advocacy group U.S. PIRG says.

This year's Most Influential Women in Payments honorees span the globe, demonstrating the universal importance of personal connections and career mobility, as well as the ways technology can connect a hybrid workforce and propel commerce.

Martincevic, one of American Banker's Most Influential Women in Payments for 2022, immigrated to the U.S. alone at age 17 without knowing how to speak English. She became the first person in her family to obtain a college degree.

Muse, one of American Banker's Most Influential Women in Payments for 2022, has put the wireless carrier ahead of many banks in its adoption of real-time payments technology for billing.

Russia's invasion has disrupted life at Lithuanian startup Paysera, which has a dozen employees in Ukraine, including Yevhen Matasar, who fled from Kyiv to a nearby town where he still does some programming when he can. "This is a very difficult situation … it's helpful to be able to continue to work," Matasar said.

Best known as a maker of ATMs and point-of-sale devices, Diebold Nixdorf is launching a new cloud platform to support merchants and their customers as transactions become more hardware-agnostic.

Jamaica plans to give $16 of free money to the first 100,000 citizens who use its soon-to-be-launched Jam-Dex digital currency.

The bank's ongoing partnership with DailyPay complements services such as real-time billing and payments. This combination could help employers attract and retain employees amid the Great Resignation.

Germany has emerged as the main roadblock to broaden European Union sanctions against Russia by targeting the country’s biggest bank and its energy sector. 

Early Warning Services, which operates the Zelle peer-to-peer payments network, is working to educate consumers about common scams, but it faces criticism over how its banks respond to victims.

Visa and Mastercard are set to cut interchange rates for some transactions, but merchants argue that they will still pay more overall and want Congress to put a stop to the card networks' plan.

Bank of America’s consumer clients made $294 billion of total payments last month, up 16% from a year earlier, as the U.S. economy continued its recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.

As Visa and Mastercard move swiftly to limit their business in Russia, their nascent rivals face a challenge to fill the gap.

U.S. payment giants like Visa, Mastercard, American Express and PayPal — along with smaller companies like Paysera in Lithuania — have blocked transactions or pulled out of Russia and Belarus in response to the invasion of Ukraine.

Sberbank said it’s looking at the possibility of issuing cards using the Russian payments system Mir and China’s UnionPay after Visa and Mastercard suspended operations following the invasion of Ukraine. 

Block, the digital payments company run by Chief Executive Jack Dorsey, is under investigation by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and multiple state attorneys general in connection with its Cash App service.

Zeta Services, a banking and credit card technology unicorn, has raised $30 million from investors including Mastercard, and the two announced a five-year collaboration to help customers launch credit card services.  

The companies' moves came a day after Visa and Mastercard said they were halting business in Russia because of its attack on Ukraine.